The full interview (definitely worth reading if you were critical of the previous article):
What's the problem this DRM is trying to address?Ubi are increasingly concerned about piracy on the PC. "It's a huge problem - you know it, I know it, other people know it. It really is a very important issue that all serious companies need to address," says their spokesperson. But they also believe that their online services will make PC gaming better. "The real idea is that if you offer a game that is better when you buy it, then people will actually buy it. We wouldn't have built it if we thought that it was really going to piss off our customers."
So what's in it for gamers?Ubi say there are three advantages to their online services. The first: you don't need a disc. The second: that you can install the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like. And the third: the automatic uploading of savegames to Ubisoft's servers.

Do Ubisoft understand that we don't want to be permanently online?They've spotted the outcry, yes. "We know that requiring a permanent online connection is not a happy point for a lot of PC gamers, but it is necessary for the system to work.

Which PC games will require an always on internet connection?All announced Ubisoft PC games will include the online services, whether sold online, or from brick and mortar stores. That includes Splinter Cell, Silent Hunter 5, Assassin's Creed 2, Prince of Persia and the newly announced Ghost Recon. "It's hard for us to say, yes, from now until the day that we all die all of our games are going to include this," says their spokesperson, "but most will."

If my internet connection goes down during play, will I lose my progress?That depends on the way the systems have been implemented. The two examples we have now, Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers VII, show differing implementations. In Assassin's Creed, if your connection cuts out, you'll be taken back to the last checkpoint. "With Settlers, your game will resume exactly where you left off," says Ubisoft's spokesperson.

How will I know what I'll lose?"You'll have to wait for the reviews, and to hear what your peers are saying."

What happens if Ubisoft take the DRM servers offline for maintenance, or suffer a technical breakdown?In the case of a server failure their games will be taken offline, and you'll be unable to play them.

"The idea is to avoid that point as much as possible, but we have been clear from the beginning that the game does need an internet connection for you to play. So if it goes down for real for a little while, then yeah, you can't play. "

Are Ubisoft trying to kill PC gaming?One theory states that piracy is such a problem on PC that they'd prefer to move their customers to the Xbox or PS3. Their spokesperson disagrees.

"No, we're not trying to kill the PC market. Are we frustrated by the PC market? I think everyone is. In the end it all comes back to one single truth: piracy is a big, huge, hairy problem. It's a market that suffered a lot because of piracy, and we're all just trying to figure out what we think is the best way to deal with it."
Do Ubi believe this DRM is unhackable?They accept that it's all DRM's fate to be eventually hacked, explaining that internally, they've already talked of a timescale for how long their games will be protected by it. But, they believe that it's secure enough for them. "We wouldn't do it if we didn't believe in it. The guys who designed it believe in it. Do we think that it's the one system that God has sent onto earth that will never be cracked by anybody ever? We can't guarantee that, but we believe in it. "

Does this mean that Ubi are dissatisfied with other online rights management platforms like Steam?There's a hint of that, although Ubi are keen to praise Valve's online platform. "We think what Steam has done is amazingly valid, but aren't Steam games cracked amazingly fast? It's not a question of dissatisfaction, it's a question of 'we've got another idea, another way of implementing it, and we're going for it'."

What happens when it becomes economically inefficient to run the servers for these games? Will Ubisoft take the servers down? And will that mean we can't play the games we bought?

The first point Ubi makes is that they intend for the servers to stay up. "Say in 5 years someone who bought Assassin's Creed 2 wants to go back and play it, the hope is, the plan is that we'll be on Assassin's Creed, I dunno, 3, 4, 5, and the servers will still be there to serve those new games," explains their spokesperson. "They'll also be able to serve the old games." But Ubisoft have the ability to patch the DRM out of their games. "If for some reason, and this is not in the plan, but if for some reason all of the servers someday go away, then we can release a patch so that the game can be played in single-player without an online connection. But that's if all of the servers are gone."

Will Ubi make a firm commitment to removing the DRM if the servers are to be taken offline?

We'll paste the straight transcript here:

PCG: What I think a lot of us would really like is a firm commitment that you understand our worries that the servers are going to go down and suddenly we've just got some trash data on our hard drives that we've paid for.

Ubisoft: The system is made by guys who love PC games. They play PC games, they are your friends.

PCG: So you can commit to saying that those systems will be patched out?

Ubisoft: That's the plan.

PCG: It's the plan, or it's definitely going to happen?

Ubisoft: That's written into the goal of the overall plan of the thing. But we don't plan on shutting down the servers, we really don't."

54 user comments

Unless this new DRM is "rootkit" based it is probably doom to failure. Only Sony has ever produce a DRM (the rootkit) that was immune to all circumvention. Unfortunately it was just too powerful and the FEDs forced them to remove it bringing tranquility back to the world.

If you loose your internet, all you will have is a useless "paperweight".

Originally posted by gnovak1: I hope these companies realize that actions like these are actually influencing pirating more than deterring it.

Yup. So they make an on-line server that does X and Y, someone else makes a 3rd party one (that you can run locally) that does the same thing. Done, DRM cracked.

I would seriously give up on trying to do on-line games pirated if you are still trying. That's where you choose to buy the game or not. That's where I draw my line. The difficulties you experience with a pirated copy is just not worth the effort and time you will lose, such as the current state of L4D2 on-line: cracked one day, fixed the next. And then what? Hope for a crack in < 24 hours? Crackers have lives too.

If it was not such a leeching and never give back anything system (P2P, and seeding is not 'giving back'), then maybe this problem would not be so prevalent. But it seems crackers are more than willing to give out their work, and every 12-year old out there thinks 'I can get the game for free; why doesn't it work! waaaaaah'. That's what I hate about it.

If they are going to get rid of that kind of attitude about games (and other content), I am all for it. Content at a fair price is a good thing. Fair price is of course subjective but I've paid for games when the price goes down, music ($0.89-1.29/£0.99 per song), and other types of content (especially when you CANNOT find it for free anywhere, but this should not be the only motivation to buy content).

Originally posted by Amak: Try giving some incentive to buy the game and people will do so!

Whilst I don't agree with the ubisoft policy at all we all know what you are saying is not true. Even if they sold it for $ 5 and removed the online DRM protection crap , release groups would still pirate it just so they could get kudos for it and let everyone know how fab they are.

Nobody forces anybody to download anything.. and the release groups allow a proper "try before buy" feature that any manufacturer worth a damn should by now accept is what people want.. not some half crippled demo.

I remember when game demos were a couple of levels so you got a real taste of what you were expected to fork out for.. oops.. that's all most games are these day.. a couple of levels..

Originally posted by Amak: Try giving some incentive to buy the game and people will do so!

Whilst I don't agree with the ubisoft policy at all we all know what you are saying is not true. Even if they sold it for $ 5 and removed the online DRM protection crap , release groups would still pirate it just so they could get kudos for it and let everyone know how fab they are.

Sure its going to be pirated but it gives the people who buy games more incentive. For me i'd gladly buy a game not to hassell with a crack. This just makes me more willing to skip it and move on to something that is less of a hassell than downloading a cracked verison to play in my style. I think i'll skip all Ubisoft titles for now.

When i was in the Army there were times I had no internet connection and only could play single player games; this would prevent that too. Just a stupid policy in general and gives me no "PERKS" as they claim. This is a big F U to serious PC gamers who buy games.

Quote:

Quote:The first: you don't need a disc

.

But you need the internet?!? PLEASE! So that "Advantage" is moot!

Quote:The second: that you can install

the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like.

And?!

Quote:And the third: the automatic uploading of savegames to Ubisoft's servers.

I have enough harddrive space thanks and I'm not going to be running over to my buddies house to play some social Single Player gaming... Is this guy for real? They are really trying to sell me on the "perks"....

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 22 Feb 2010 @ 14:38

Ubisoft dropped the ball on this. They realize they f$%ked up and now are backpeddling trying to save face, as its quite apparent that ac2 will have abysmal sales from the $hitstorm that has erupted over this news (Ars Technica, Gamespot, Eurogamer, Wired, etc). Just look at the comments section of any gaming sites who have a write-up about this.

Anyway, not going to buy it. Will just wait for Razor's release which should be a few days after release if not sooner.

Should the sales not be worth a damn once they implement the new system, it may be enough to deter them from doing it to future games. The obvious simple solution to this problem for people concerned about it, is don't buy it; convince others not to buy it, and educate people on why this is a bad idea.

Why should anyone pay full retail price on a game, that as someone said and I quote, "is a paper weight", because you can't play it if you offline. That means if you want to install it on a laptop, go take a flight someone and play it, can't. That means even while riding in a car or bus state to state, or across countries, most people can't, as connecting to that many wireless connections continuously just isn't worth it.

For anyone not traveling and just staying home, have fun if you ISP disconnects or their DRM servers do. This is just bad bad bad judgment and the only saving grace from this nightmare is to not let Ubisoft have any sales from it. Eventually once they can't sell it on PC, they will have to make the choice to stop making PC games or to stop using that sad DRM.

Wait a min... "The second: that you can install
the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like."

WTF? So if one person buys the game...and then shares that disc to 100 others...then they get the game for free (as long as they are connected to the internet)...but yet, one person buying the game and then uploading it for 100 people to download...is bad? Wtf is the difference besides the physical disc being passed around?

Originally posted by gldoorii: Wait a min... "The second: that you can install
the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like."

WTF? So if one person buys the game...and then shares that disc to 100 others...then they get the game for free (as long as they are connected to the internet)...but yet, one person buying the game and then uploading it for 100 people to download...is bad? Wtf is the difference besides the physical disc being passed around?

You will have an account for the online server is what they mean. So you can install it on any PC in the world but would need your own username/pw to play it, that will be created with some type of auth code I imagine.

Originally posted by gldoorii: Wait a min... "The second: that you can install
the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like."

WTF? So if one person buys the game...and then shares that disc to 100 others...then they get the game for free (as long as they are connected to the internet)...but yet, one person buying the game and then uploading it for 100 people to download...is bad? Wtf is the difference besides the physical disc being passed around?

You will have an account for the online server is what they mean. So you can install it on any PC in the world but would need your own username/pw to play it, that will be created with some type of auth code I imagine.

So if I buy it, and want to play it on my pc on weekends, and loan the disc to my friend in another part of the city, he can login and play it mon-friday. Correct?

Big fail on Ubisoft's part...maybe for their next game they will engineer their own custom mice/optical eye scan device where you have to authenticate your iris and/or hand before you can play.

updated to-do-list:
*get an xbox fro 170$
*pirate all ubisoft games to hell
*get drunk and laugh like a maniac
*flood ubisoft support with the message i hacked ur games using a proxy and hidden ip service followed by "MUHAHAHA"

Originally posted by gldoorii: Wait a min... "The second: that you can install
the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like."

WTF? So if one person buys the game...and then shares that disc to 100 others...then they get the game for free (as long as they are connected to the internet)...but yet, one person buying the game and then uploading it for 100 people to download...is bad? Wtf is the difference besides the physical disc being passed around?

You will have an account for the online server is what they mean. So you can install it on any PC in the world but would need your own username/pw to play it, that will be created with some type of auth code I imagine.

So if I buy it, and want to play it on my pc on weekends, and loan the disc to my friend in another part of the city, he can login and play it mon-friday. Correct?

Big fail on Ubisoft's part...maybe for their next game they will engineer their own custom mice/optical eye scan device where you have to authenticate your iris and/or hand before you can play.

LOL! Good point! He wont even need the disc after install; just your user name and password!

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 22 Feb 2010 @ 18:50

Originally posted by gldoorii: Wait a min... "The second: that you can install
the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like."

WTF? So if one person buys the game...and then shares that disc to 100 others...then they get the game for free (as long as they are connected to the internet)...but yet, one person buying the game and then uploading it for 100 people to download...is bad? Wtf is the difference besides the physical disc being passed around?

You will have an account for the online server is what they mean. So you can install it on any PC in the world but would need your own username/pw to play it, that will be created with some type of auth code I imagine.

So if I buy it, and want to play it on my pc on weekends, and loan the disc to my friend in another part of the city, he can login and play it mon-friday. Correct?

Big fail on Ubisoft's part...maybe for their next game they will engineer their own custom mice/optical eye scan device where you have to authenticate your iris and/or hand before you can play.

LOL! Good point! He wont even need the disc after install; just your user name and password!

Okay, people seem to be confused about how this works these days. Really, most software works the same way. (Any Windows OS is a great example). The data is irrelevant. What you are buying is the LICENSE to the software. That means, YOU are allowed to install and run the software on as many PCs as it is specified in the license agreement. In this particular case, I think the Ubisoft people are being extremely deceptive. It is of no benefit or "perk" whatsoever to be allowed to install the software on as many PCs as you wish. ALL software works that way. What IS critical is that you are not allowed to USE the software on multiple PCs at the same exact point in time. Now, to monitor and prevent this, along with this License you are purchasing comes an ACCOUNT, with a user name and password. If they "catch you" running the software on two different computers at the same exact time, watch and see what will happen. With this type of arrangement, Ubisoft maintains complete CONTROL over that license at all times. Typically, when certain accounts are abused to a point above a certain tolerance, the account is simply blacklisted and disabled. Basically, the person that originally purchased the software is screwed. The only option is to go crawling back to Ubisoft to beg for another license key or account. Something which they may or may not grant. Save your receipts people!

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 23 Feb 2010 @ 4:03

The PS3 and 360 will not have these problems considering the fact that Live is the 360's main feature and the PS3 currently cannot run pirated material.

They can't? Bold statement. My cousins is hacked to all end with 100s of games. As a sidenote each one of those 100 games would not have ever been purchased by him nor his parents...just saying not justifiying.

The PS3 and 360 will not have these problems considering the fact that Live is the 360's main feature and the PS3 currently cannot run pirated material.

They can't? Bold statement. My cousins is hacked to all end with 100s of games. As a sidenote each one of those 100 games would not have ever been purchased by him nor his parents...just saying not justifiying.

He should have been more clear...cannot run pirated PS3 material. It can of course run NES with ROMS.

so what this says to me is they dont want customers unless you have internet so in turn they are loosing profit for customers who dont have net but do game or hell for that matter dont have high speed net

I am surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but you will be screwed if your ISP has a bandwidth limit. It would suck to try to go online one day for work to find out you can't because your kid used all your bandwidth playing a single player game. Granted it would take a while (hopefully) to use even 1GB from how they will have it implemented, but still, the option is there, and if you go over...

Development houses and publishers go out of business all the time. Sure, Ubisoft has been around for a while, but that's no guarantee I'll be able to play the game I paid for in a year. Usually when companies go out of business, they barely tie up the loose ends and end up dropping the ball on a lot of stuff. Patching everyone's game on the way to bankruptcy court is probably low on the priority list. Heck...even look at Halo2 for the XBox. It seems like it would take very little extra effort to keep a very popular game like Halo2 running. They're canning the ability play it online (which is the main appeal of the game) and they're not even going out of business.

I'm the type that likes to replay certain games, so I'll be skipping games with this kind of DRM. It's not worth the stress when the company burns you.

I just love how these gaming companies talk about how "huge" the "piracy problem" is and how much they have been hurt by it. Well, it's not obvious to me at all how they have been hurt by it. I wish that people would just opt not to pay money to be treated like this. This whole DRM thing would disappear overnight if folks did not pay to participate. Sure, "the plan" is to have these servers up and running from now on, but that isn't going to mean diddly to the folks who fork over all this dough to buy these games only to find them useless because the company no longer find it economically feasible to maintain servers for them or maybe decides that it would be better to charge a monthly fee to participate. Bleah. I say just vote with your dollars and avoid these idiots entirely.

I will never, EVER, pay for anything Ubisoft. If this is their business model, they don't get my business. There are plenty of other options out there that work without these restrictions. On the amazingly off chance I actually wanted to play one of their games badly enough, I'd buy it second hand after it had been cracked and feed it a the keep alive signal from my own system.

I guess when you allegedly lose 1% of billions of dollars every year from piracy that could put a real dent in how much you get to spend on buying lunch. But the reality is that piracy is not the problem, its companies jockeying to find the gaming platform that they believe they can sell the most games for. The problem is that while they pretend to be following the flow of traffic from PC gaming to console gaming, they tend to be months behind that flow of traffic. These days more people would prefer to go back to online PC gaming rather than deal with all the problems that the consoles are experiencing. Console systems are great, if you are totally into single-player gaming, but if you want a true multi-player gaming experience there is nothing better than a PC. You can't upgrade your console to meet your hardware expectations, but you can upgrade your PC, and anyone with half a brain knows that no gaming console will ever match the sheer power and connectability of a PC when it comes to online gaming. One of these days these t00ls at the software companies are going to wake up and realize that the only money they are losing is by continuing to put out great games on worthless console systems that will never meet the expectations of their gaming customers. Piracy isn't the problem, the idiots who think they "know" how we want to game are the problem.

The really, really good thing, is that teams like the one I'm with not only struggle to remove DRM, and to make games more playable, is that with Ubisoft titles, its going to be MORE FUN to play a pirated game. More people will learn about Piracy from this, and it will benefit everyone.

Would you rather pay for a game, that could screw you? Or PIRATE a game, which is free BTW, and then play it the way it's intended, without an internet connection?

Before, it was more "if you pay for this, you get more than a pirated version, or an actual hard copy" which made some people actually pay. Now, it's about the fact that the paid for game is more of a nuisance than the pirated copy, making the pirated the PREFERABLE one.

I will never buy a Ubisoft title again, and I will be spreading the word.

So ubi has not shed any light on if your pc would need to be left on 24/7/365 for the game to phone home all the time or if it will be say 2-3 times in 24 hours?
personally i am not interested in the game but for those that are what would happen when they go away on holiday?
They may well come back to lost save data for the above games if the game can't phone home.
I for one no longer leave my pc's turned on when they are not in use, a few years ago when the power requirements where a lot lower they were left running, but not any more.

Originally posted by bluetac: So ubi has not shed any light on if your pc would need to be left on 24/7/365 for the game to phone home all the time or if it will be say 2-3 times in 24 hours?
personally i am not interested in the game but for those that are what would happen when they go away on holiday?
They may well come back to lost save data for the above games if the game can't phone home.
I for one no longer leave my pc's turned on when they are not in use, a few years ago when the power requirements where a lot lower they were left running, but not any more.

Just a thought is all!

It clearly states that the game must be connected to the internet, when it's in use. If you are currently playing, you need the internet on. Otherwise, no.

I would think there would be more piracy with movies then video games. I use to be a hardcore gamer but spending $50 or so a game is way to much especially in this economy. People on here brought up many good points. I asked many people at my work who are gamers about this game and they will not be buying it because of the internet connection issue and the cost of the game.

"But Ubisoft have the ability to patch the DRM out of their games."
There is the sentence we are looking for.
Boycott the game and make damn sure that your console friends boycott it too or it's a moot point. If the revenue figures fall to low the company has two choices. Remover DRM or leave the business. They will drop PC games unless we get consoles to boycott as well. Remember, we are all in this together. It's us or them. I prefer a game with no DRM in the first place but there are better ways than this gestapo tactic.
They have the right to do what they want with there product. We have the right to decide if it's worth the trouble. After all, gaming is suppose to be about fun not just money.

I added a nice letter you can edit for your use but make sure you send it and sign up your friends too!

Dear Sir or Madam:
JUST WANTED TO SEND YOU A NOTE IN RESPONSE TO “'Assassin's Creed 2' DRM will require constant Internet connection”. This escalation of DRM and the attack on consumers who purchase software is not going unheard. It is your right in a free society to design and sell your wares as you see fit. However when you lack the insight to consider that some people who purchase your product do not have an internet connections or the income to establish a connection just to use your product you are showing your shortsightedness. I live in a rural area where the best you can establish is a 256kb connection on dial-up and satellite is the only other option. Why would I want to spend and additional $120 to $600 a year just to play a game? I know I am part of a very small group of people in this country and that your financial models do not include us and you do not have the desire to even acknowledge we exist but we are here.
This letter is to inform you I had wanted to purchase this game but as DRM is constantly being added in the name of profits and the insanity of lawyers I will not be purchasing your product and for that matter any other that requires internet connection. I have no interest in on-line gaming.
You might consider getting rid of a few of those high dollar legal beagles on your payroll. This would lower your overhead and reduce your cost to distribute something to society that would benefit everyone. Consider it. While I await a reply I will be take my $60 and buy a nice dinner. Maybe while I discuss this with my friends we can establish a dialogue with our congressman.
Sincerely,

Attached you will find additional signatures of people with a displeasure in the abuse of fair use laws.

I really don't understand this... I mean, first of all AC2 is one of the fastest selling videogames in history, second does Ubisoft really believe the game is going to take LONG to crack? What the hell it's not magic, it's software! The crack is going to be out in a month if not less! And the money they've spent creating the damn DRM is probably more than they'll loose because of piracy; money they could have spent improving the game. I sure hope AC2 is perfectly bug-free, because I'm spending 90 euros to buy it (special edition) and I've been waiting since November for the PC version (I suspect for no other reason than Nvidia, AC2 sponsor, being late with their new video cards) and I'm not going to accept that my money is being used to create a stupid DRM. And finally, why should those who buy and pay for the game be treated like this? This will not prevent piracy, it will encourage it! And what about those who pay internet by the minute (they are quite a few, at least here in Italy)?? You think they're going to BUY the game and pay every minute of it?? Of course they won't, they're just going to crack it! Bad mistake Ubisoft, you're increasing piracy!

fuq it. thats the last straw for me. I work offshore for long periods but in my free time i game. its either that or punch the clown and i aint doin that on a boat or rig full of guys. Ubi & all the others who are gonna go this route are gonna lose my my business...and alot of others in my field. But guess what? I'm still gonna play. Cuz im gonna do something ive never done. I'm gonna hack the ever lovin sheeit outta their games. We cant get that kind of bandwith offshore to deal with this drm and i dont like this setup anyway. Screw 'em. I will hack chop & slice my way thru their code til i can crap out a drm free game. If i buy a game at a store i OWN A COPY meaning i can do whatever i want with it damn near. You CANNOT come in my house and tell me what i can do with it thats for damn sure. You might as well tell me that i cant use toilet paper to blow my nose. Or that a library cant lend out movies. Well they can get my middle finger.

HA! you what i just realized? This whole system is like that time I had been getting bullied by this kid for months and he backed me into a corner one day & I lashed out and flattened his fat little nose across his face and then he ran bleeding screaming and crying to his mommy and daddy. Pathetic ain't it.

I don't play many games but Ubisoft has just put me off buying any of their games from now on. They are basically telling me that I can buy their game, install it on my desktop or laptop but that if I were to go to hospital for weeks or months and had no internet access, I won't be able to play the game that I bought a licence to play.

It's like software companies now deciding that they'd like to have the software we buy stored on their servers and we'll access them with thin clients. I want the software I buy to run on my computer any time I want it to, whether or not that computer is connected to the net. People in outback Australia are going to have no chance as their internet access is dodgy at best.

Ubisoft, do the words "Shove it!" mean anything to you?

I say everyone should just boycott this and any other game or piece of software that tries to do the same thing.

Well I have absolutely no respect for Ubisoft at all now. I patched my legal copy of Spore with a no-cd crack because I'm not going to carry the stupid disk around in my laptop bag. Why the * would I want to pay for wireless internet or find a hot-spot?! I will not be purchasing any games that implement this in the future.

Most funny thing about this is that those who DONT have internet usualy buy games becose they cant download them (i dont speak about rare cases)!
And those who buy games will buy them anyway and those who DONT they will not buy it anyway(agein not about rare cases)!
So....
Its stupid
People who buy game are usualy people without internet and like... 38% ppl who have it(like 50-65
% ppl are gamers ) so they are loosing well.. like.. 60% of buyers becose they dont have internet so they buy games becose they dont download games so they buy peace of crap becose they cant use it and of those 38% of internet users who buy games only like... 30% have good internet connection and like 8% dont so they lose alot of customers im sorry ubisoft you are STUPID :D btw AC II is great game i love it :)

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 07 Mar 2010 @ 11:46

I have a question that i bay a Assassin's Creed 2 PC game original dvd.
And play the game by using the Ubisoft servers.But after 1 or 3 years
when i wish to play the game again.Can Ubisoft men ten the servers so
long time or not???????????

So ... now we find out that Ubisoft's servers went down leaving legitimate buyers of this and other games holding the bag while pirates use it without a problem. Oh don't fret though. I am sure they are spending a lot of additional revenue making sure that backup servers, ups power supplies, and additional manpower are present to prevent this from happening again ... at the customers expense of course. Remember Ubisoft customers, this DRM protection is for your own good to keep cost down and help expand gaming. Don't worry about the cost of keeping copy protection on your products, you'll have enough money to pay for it on the next purchase!

Ok, does ne1 else see that this uber f'up looks EXTREMELY similar to a DRM that, hmmm, Blizzard Entertainment uses???

I personally have not played Assassin's Creed 2 (my husband has it for ps3 - I can't stand controllers unless I have to..../sigh, played too much Duke Nukem and Doom growing up), but that DRM sounds just like what Blizzard did with World of Warcraft accounts, hell - battle.net accounts in general, everything is saved to remote servers and when the servers goes down - so does the game and/or accounts (It's rare when servers go down - other than "planned maintenance").

Their DRM is basically a rip-off of an already-been-done DRM that actually has rolled out MUCH better than theirs with fewer complaints. Ok, so WoW is an MMO but you can also upload all of your Blizz games to your account so you never have to worry about losing a CD-Key again - which I'm notorious for, on my 3rd copy of D2, my 2nd copy of Starcraft, and 4th copy of WC3 - thank God for this service.

And if they're going DRM, why not go a route similar to Steam (which I've never lost a CD-Key for, even though I probably could since it's automatically saved to your account, I wish I knew how I haven't....still have the games and the boxes in one piece)? I have it installed on 2 different PCs (and as of the 12th - a late-2009 MacBook) and, granted, the download speeds for reinstalling stuff is slow as all hell but IMHO it works and it works well.

There's always gonna be those a'holes out there that are gonna ruin it for us gamers who would rather buy a game and have a REAL COPY than a DL'd/torrented game that runs the risk of getting a crack that's laced with some kind of infection. And honestly, it takes much longer to DL from a torrent site than install it straight from the disc (at least this is my xp).